


unending lease on hamstrung rage

by fragilelittleteacup



Category: True Detective
Genre: 1990s/pre-1995, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Explicit Language, Extremely Dubious Consent (mentioned), Gen, Hallucinations, Hospitalization, Lesbian Character, Mental Health Issues, Original Character(s), Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Psychosis, Sexual Violence, Withdrawal, thought i'd explore it, wondered what ginger's daughter might be like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2018-10-02 17:28:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10223411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilelittleteacup/pseuds/fragilelittleteacup
Summary: Hope dies last in a hospital, but has a habit of doing it next to you.(Or: Rust wakes up in Northshore Psychiatric Hospital.)





	1. indulge him 'till he's ironclad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).
  * Translation into English available: [[translation]破碎的愤怒，永无止息 unending lease on hamstrung rage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10323785) by [hieroglyphics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hieroglyphics/pseuds/hieroglyphics)



> name, chapter titles and summary taken from Gareth Liddiard's song Strange Tourist.

White walls tinged with green like the residue of mould, resisting even after being scrubbed at for so long. The smell of a hospital. Chemicals blanketing vomit and sick desperation, the pungent stench of irony and tired exasperation. Clinical and cold, not like the filthy ceilings of before, not like the crack dens and the shooting galleries and the bedrooms where he’d lie under Ginger and gasp, _that’s fuckin right, get the fuck on with it you motherfucker-_

At some point Crash realises he’s somewhere he’s never been before, somewhere apart from the suffocating muggy warmth of it all, the hazy heat that comes with always being high, with always being drunk or staggered by punches, hands too heavy and lumbering to _properly_ grab someone by the hair and smash their face into a wall. _America takes drugs in psychic defence,_ he thinks, the too-soft sensation of a mattress against his back swallowing him up with a startlingly unfamiliar embrace. He almost misses the scratch and tear of old fibres, metal springs cutting into his skin.

As he starts to wake up, he knows what he must look like. He doesn’t quite know how long it’s been, who he is, or why he’s done everything that he’s done, but he knows his skin is the colour of porridge, his hair is greasy, his flesh sagging off his bones like melting wax. He imagines that he’ll just melt like this. Dissolve into a puddle of drugs and sweat. He thinks about the essence of life, about the concept of a human soul, and he knows that _his_ soul is a vile and potent mix of everything he’s ever snorted, injected, swallowed, or smoked. Morphine, benzoylmethylecgonine, methamphetamine, diacetylmorphine. Cannabinoids, opioids, stimulants, disassociative motherfucking hallucinogens. Dripping from him like blood. Gushing like a river.

He knows what he is. _Junkie piece of shit,_ he thinks, the words almost comforting, _yeah, that’s me. That’s who I am._

So he knows what has to come next. What is guaranteed to be occurring at this very moment, given the fact that he’s not dead, by some miracle wrapped up all pretty in the guise of a tragedy. He’s too fucked to properly reflect on the fact that he’s in a psychiatric ward, but he knows it, even if his eyes are glued shut like someone’s held his eyelids down and put tape over them, just like Ginger had tried to a few times, thinking Crash would go quietly like some kind of pussy.

He knows that years of therapy, bullshit, and softly spoken interrogations await him, once he has regained the ability to greet the world with a conscious mind. The treacherous war between genuinely concerned psychiatrists and furious law enforcement will begin– likely, he supposes, already has begun– and he will be at the centre of it, the prize to be won by the dominant side. He already knows that the cops will win. He’s not one of them, not anymore, but they own his ass. They’ve got him on a leash, invisible hands around his throat, and the thought of yet another jaunt around the bureaucratic maypole almost makes him miss Ginger’s hands on his body, Ginger’s dick splitting him in two and making him bite down into his knuckles just so he won’t cry out.

He knows what they’ll say about Ginger. What they’ll try to make him believe he became while he was undercover. _Victim._ Yeah, right. If anyone was abusing him, it was the fucking police. _We wanna make you our wild man junkie. No expiration date, baby. Facedown on that mattress, take it like a man._

He can feel the sickness coming. The withdrawal. It is only at this point that he realises someone is in the room with him– a hand brushes his arm, a gentle and considerate touch that has his skeleton and nervous system ripping through his skin, like a wire through plasticine, and then returning with an explosion he feels down to the edges of his fingertips like the force of a thousand suns.

A woman. Someone he knew a long time ago.

He screams when she tries to speak to him, and it _hurts,_ it hurts so fucking much, everything’s on fire and he can’t breathe, can’t even think right, and he could almost swear there was a baby girl in his arms, slipping away from him, somewhere he can’t reach, and the violence of her loss makes him tremble like he's having a seizure–

“Mom,” he sobs, because he knows who the woman is, and he isn’t strong enough to hate her right now, “Mom, please-”

She holds him, and it hurts. But he pulls her close, because he needs her. He needs her.

“Get me somethin’,” he whispers, words pounding like a booming echo inside his empty skull, “anythin’ mom, just get me somethin’ to take away the pain. Know some guys, I can hook you up. Listen, you gotta get me somethin’, _please-”_

She pushes him away. He’s nowhere near lucid enough to feel it when they strap him down, or to recognise that _of course_ she wasn’t going to get a hit for him, _of course_ she couldn’t help him, this was all he could ever really expect from her-

And he separates. Disintegrates. Leaves his physical shell, almost politely, stepping out into some kind of _other,_ a limbo where nothing is real except chemical reactions and firing synapses.

His body never stops screaming.

 

 


	2. couldn't take the illness or endure the cure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ya boy is back. had a few beers and craved some true detective goodness. i do miss writing crash. (quality and grammar isn't guaranteed because i'm slightly hammered and perpetually fucked up, but hey. hope you enjoy.)

They have laminated shit everywhere.

The layer of positivity that they try to stick over everything is truly fucked, and Crash might be insane but at least he has _honesty_ on his side. This is just like any other asylum, just like those human zoos where they tie you up and electrocute you and sever the connections to the anterior part of your frontal lobe- only nowadays they might barbecue your brain and dose you up real good with sedatives, but at least they’re standing by with pink laminates droning on about _wellness models_ and _spiritual health_ and _you can still make a full recovery Mr Cohle, we’re here for you, here’s some nice Prozac to calm you down, eat that up, it’s good for you, just what a growin’ boy needs-_

They print the schedules in different colours to stimulate the patient experience. Because treating grown ass fucking adults like children was always bound to help. Well, Crash takes it, because the world spins and heaves and simmers, and when he’s high the boredom doesn’t fuck him quite so badly. Outside they have a garden. Crash goes there when he’s told to, and when the nurses need appeasing and he has to at least _pretend_ that there isn’t a distance between him and every other living, breathing thing that will never truly be fixed. He isn’t alive anymore. It’d be better if he was dead, but he doesn’t quite know how to surmount the difference.

He’s sure the effort will be made someday soon.

The doctors are less kind, and Crash prefers it that way. They just throw pills at him, apathetic and uncaring, treating him like those lab monkeys that eventually lose their hair and shed their skin from chemical exposure, lying at the bottom of their cages whimpering for more drugs. And he does recognise his cage, some days, just like all the other non-human primates with mutated brain cells and radioactive psyches. It’s humiliating. Crawling on his hands and knees, someone always behind him, someone always getting a leg over when he’s unable to see what’s _fucking wrong with this picture-_

So he goes outside.

The trees are alive and real, and he almost finds it disturbing. They stand there in silence, swaying gently in the wind, watching him, roots dug deep under the ground, ready to pounce. He sits at a bench and tries to breathe.

Everything is alive, and it frightens him.

When he closes his eyes he can’t see, can’t watch the world and make sure it won’t attack him, so he doesn’t. He can’t move because the ground will rise and the sky will fall, sandwiching him in the middle and popping his organs like berries as his bones are liquefied, so he doesn’t. He can’t breathe because the air is poison, because he needs a mouth near his _breathing smoke_ in order to inhale, needs Ginger up against him _forcing_ the breaths to go down–

So he doesn’t.

He isn’t sure what he does, because he can’t do anything. There’s a hand on the back of his neck, and he leans into it.

 

 

“Didn’t think I’d find you here. Didn’t think I’d find you at all, truth be told.”

Years have passed. The fucking apocalypse has come and gone, and Crash is still sitting on that park bench. He returns to his body, done roasting in the depths of Hell, and looks up at the person before him.

He’d never learned her name, because Ginger never told it to him, and if he’d asked more than once he’d probably have earned a good skull-fucking. She’s got his eyes, dark and icy and clever, ginger hair buzzed short into a military cut. More innocent than her father, but inherently more powerful because she isn’t an addict. She’s wearing leather just like her daddy, boots done up tight and proper, scars thickening her knuckles. Violence was in her blood. Crash had seen her leaned up against a truck one night, fist in a girl’s blonde hair, looking down on the act just like her father had done with Crash so many times. Pussy or cock, it makes no difference when you're on your knees and can't breathe.

“If it ain’t the motorbike dyke,” he replies flatly, impressing himself with the rhyme, “you sure got a nose for sniffin’ out shit.”

The words sound calm, almost convincing. The trees around them sway, and Crash doesn’t look, but he can hear them, hear the words delivered in the hush of leaves and the shifting of branches.

_We’re watching you_

She takes a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, smiling disdainfully. The addict part of Crash’s brain kicks into gear like a firework, and he’s extended a hand out expectantly before he can even think through the action. She hands him one, and lights up.

“What does that make you then?”

“I’m under no illusions ‘bout what I am,” he replies, eyes already rolling back into his head as she flicks at the lighter’s mechanisms, sparking a flame and getting that tobacco _burning._ Oh, yeah. It feels _good_ to be smoking again.

She takes a seat beside him, and Crash wishes she hadn’t. Now his view of the trees is unobstructed. They wink at him. He sucks down hard on his cigarette, throat straining as he fills his lungs.

_We got you, motherfucker_

She’s speaking. She’s speaking, and he tries to listen.

_We got you, man_

“…a clear way out of this, I see fit to give it t’you. See, I like you, Crash. Wouldn’t say you’re my type, but I like you.”

He swallows. There are leaves in his mouth. He’s being overrun. Like an old building, reclaimed by the planet’s natural forces. Only a matter of time before he ends up in the ground. He can taste the dirt already, feel it between his teeth, dry against his tongue. He’s starting to realise whose voice it is that’s whispering to him, and he’d recognise that low drawl anywhere. It sends shivers prickling down his body, and he presses his knees together tight, wondering whether it's desire or pure terror that fills him. He's starting to realise there was never really a difference.

_Nowhere to run now, Crash_

“You,” he clears his throat, feels clay blocking his windpipe, “ain’t gonna tell your daddy shit.”

She laughs. He wants to vomit.

_We got you, Crash_

“Like I said, jerkoff, I _see fit_ to keep my mouth shut, you get to escape him. You oughta be polite with me.”

_WE GOT YOU, MOTHERFUCKER_

She slaps a hand on his neck.

And oh, oh, it could be him, it so could be, and Crash breathes out shakily when he feels skin on skin, a palm gripping him in what’s probably supposed to be an expression of friendship, of solidarity in the face of the man they both despise and love. He closes his eyes and believes that it is Ginger beside him, not Ginger’s bastard daughter, not the unwanted orphan offspring of a motorcycle gang. And it grounds him. It fucking grounds him, messed-up as he is, and the cigarette tumbles from his hand like it’d never been there at all. She shakes him firmly to make her point, words blurred and indistinct, lowered into something authoritative as his brain twists her voice into _his._

“If you’re out, I’m out too. I’ll cover your tracks, make sure he can never find you the same way I did. But you ain’t ever seen me here, y’got that? I don’t want shit to do with him no more.”

He nods, he’s sure he does, because on some level he agrees with whatever sentiment she’s making. But then her hand disappears, and it _hurts_ to be cut loose, floating in the midst of all his _nothingness,_ and the trees are closing in, bodies screaming towards him at high speeds, colliding with his soul and reaching somewhere deep down where he’ll never be able to fix–

He opens his eyes.

The park bench is just a park bench. The garden before him is unthreatening and still. Sweat drips thick and salty down his forehead, and his chest rises and falls hysterically with breaths that don’t reach his lungs. He sits up fast, spinning around, looking for her, looking to see where the _fuck_ she’d gone so quickly–

A nurse looks back at him, standing a few feet away, frowning.

“Mr Cohle? Is everything alright?”

Crash stares. Eventually the nurse leaves, disturbed by his lack of reply.

The garden is quiet.

 

 


End file.
